Palace of Venaria: A Savoyard Hunting Residence in Italy
Site at a Glance
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- 4.6
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- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Savoy, Kingdom of Sardinia
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page14 sections
History
The Palace of Venaria in Italy is a Savoyard hunting residence begun in 1659 in the Baroque period for Duke Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy. It was established north of Turin among heath-covered hills and extensive game forests, and its name derives from the Latin Venatio Regia, meaning “Royal Hunt.” The complex formed part of the Savoyard “Garland of Delights,” a planned chain of palaces and leisure residences around Turin that also included Stupinigi, Rivoli Castle, and the Queen’s Villa.
Foundation and the Hunting Residence
Charles Emmanuel II acquired the villages of Altessano Superiore and Altessano Inferiore from the Milanese-origin Birago family and renamed the area Venaria. The project was intended both as a base for the duke’s hunting expeditions and as a memorial to him and his wife, Marie Jeanne Baptiste of Savoy-Nemours. In 1658, Amedeo di Castellamonte was commissioned to design the palace and the surrounding town. Construction began the following year and created an integrated complex of residence, gardens, hunting woods, and urban streets.
The new town was planned on a circular layout that echoed the collar of the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, the dynastic order of the House of Savoy. The palace, church, and town were conceived as a unified architectural and social setting expressing princely hunting and the duke’s mastery of the natural world. A straight axis crossed the town and palace before continuing beside a canal toward the Fountain of Hercules and the Temple of Diana. The church of Sant’Uberto, dedicated to the patron saint of hunting, became a focal point of this plan.
Castellamonte’s development progressed through a series of works. The stable and clock tower were built in 1660, the Palace of Diana was in place by 1663, and the upper-garden loggia and theater followed in 1666. The square before the palace was formed in 1667, while the twin church façades in the town square were completed in 1669. An orangery and the Fountain of Hercules were added in 1671, the Temple of Diana in 1673, and the porticos along the town’s principal street in 1679.
Emanuele Tesauro, a Jesuit scholar at the Savoyard court, devised the complex’s iconographic program. Court painters and stuccoists expressed the theme of the princely hunt through painted and sculpted decoration, linking the residence’s artistic program to its purpose as a hunting retreat.
Destruction and Eighteenth-Century Enlargement
French troops destroyed some of the buildings on 1 October 1693 during the Nine Years’ War, a conflict between France and a coalition of European powers. Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy and later King of Sardinia, ordered the residence to be reconstructed and enlarged in the contemporary French manner, partly in rivalry with Versailles.
From 1699, Michelangelo Garove directed the enlargement. His design placed two large wings and terminal pavilions around the Palace of Diana. The south-west pavilion was completed in 1702, and the south-east pavilion was built between 1703 and 1713. The planned north wing was never constructed, and the Great Gallery remained unfinished when Garove died in 1713.
Garove also reshaped the gardens in the formal French manner. He demolished the Temple of Diana in 1700, extended the Royal Alley in 1702, removed the seventeenth-century orangery in 1703 and the garden theater in 1711, laid out the English Garden in 1710, and created the Green Apartments. The complex suffered further damage during the 1706 Siege of Turin, when French troops under Louis d’Aubusson de La Feuillade occupied it during the War of the Spanish Succession, the struggle over the succession to the Spanish monarchy.
After the Savoyard victory, Victor Amadeus II placed Filippo Juvarra in charge in 1716. Juvarra completed the Great Gallery, developed the south-east pavilion, built the new orangery and Great Stable between 1722 and 1727, and constructed the church of Sant’Uberto. In 1725, he replaced the remains of the Temple of Diana with a labyrinth and pavilion.
Under Charles Emmanuel III, Benedetto Alfieri became project director in 1739. He rebuilt the clock tower in its original location, added the Belvedere wing in 1751, constructed the gallery between the chapel and orangery in 1754, and completed the western and eastern stables in 1758 and 1760. Indoor riding halls followed in 1761. In 1788 and 1789, Giuseppe Battista Piacenza and Carlo Randoni added the staircase on the façade of the Palace of Diana and introduced neoclassical decoration, drawing on the forms of classical antiquity. These works brought the complex’s major architectural development to an end.
Decline, Military Use, and Restoration
During the eighteenth century, the royal family increasingly preferred the hunting lodge at Stupinigi, completed in 1729, because it better matched contemporary European court tastes. Venaria continued to be used during the reigns of Victor Amadeus III and Charles Emmanuel IV, but it fell into disuse at the end of the century.
During the Napoleonic period, the palace complex became military barracks and the gardens were converted into a training ground. After the Kingdom of Sardinia was restored in 1815, Venaria did not return to royal residential use. It became part of the Royal Military Domain, while salvaged furnishings and decorations were transferred to other Savoyard palaces and castles.
From 1851 to 1943, the complex served the Royal Italian Army. It housed the Field Artillery Regiment “a Cavallo,” the Royal Military School, later the Italian Army Cavalry School, and the 5th Field Artillery Regiment. Venaria also became an important center of Savoyard cavalry, with a military riding school and a stud farm.
The army began withdrawing in the early twentieth century, and ownership was gradually transferred to the Ministry of Culture. The Chapel of Saint Hubert passed to the heritage authorities in 1936. After the garrison left, vandalism and neglect accelerated, although limited maintenance continued and the chapel received a small restoration in the 1940s. The Great Gallery and Hall of Diana underwent mainly cosmetic restoration in 1961 for celebrations marking the centenary of Italian unification. During the 1960s, local residents formed an association to protect the deteriorating palace, while public funding from the 1980s supported initial conservation and redevelopment.
The palace was transferred to the heritage authorities for restoration in 1978. On 5 December 1996, Minister of Culture Walter Veltroni and Piedmont President Enzo Ghigo established the Committee for the Palace of Venaria, which initiated a comprehensive restoration program. A 1999 framework agreement brought together the Ministry of Culture, the Piedmont Region, Turin, Venaria Reale, and Druento. Work from 1999 to 2007 covered the palace, historic village, gardens, park, and nearby La Mandria Castle.
The restored complex opened to the public on 13 October 2007 and now functions as a museum, exhibition venue, and cultural complex. The Citroneria and stables opened in 2009, and a conservation and restoration center was established in the former stable area. In 1997, Venaria became part of the UNESCO World Heritage serial property “Residences of the Royal House of Savoy,” together with fourteen former Savoyard residences in and around Turin. The restored complex is protected as an Italian cultural heritage property.
Remains
The surviving complex is organized around the original seventeenth-century Palace of Diana and the eighteenth-century extension associated with Garove and Juvarra. The older section is covered in white plaster, while the later wing is distinguished by exposed brickwork. The palace, church, stables, gardens, and town were connected by straight routes and axial spaces that extended from the urban center toward the gardens.
The Palace and Great Gallery
Palace of Diana
The Palace of Diana is the oldest and central part of Venaria. Built under Castellamonte between 1658 and 1663, it originally had two levels with short side loggias. Two additional floors were later added, including a belvedere, an elevated architectural space designed to provide a view. Smaller apartments were subsequently created to provide greater privacy than the central halls and parade chambers.
The main façade is decorated with cornucopias, shells, and fruit motifs. On the side facing the Cour d’honneur, the loggia is flanked by arched entrances, although the left-hand arch was removed during Garove’s alterations. The entrance opens onto the Cour d’honneur, which formerly contained a fountain with a deer.
Hall of Diana
The rectangular Hall of Diana occupies the heart of the Palace of Diana. Its stucco decoration and paintings focus on hunting. A vault fresco by Jan Miel represents Olympus, with Jupiter offering a gift to Diana. Large equestrian portraits depict the dukes and court figures, while Miel’s hunting canvases show deer, hare, bear, fox, and boar hunts, along with the death of the deer, departure for the woods, assembly, and treatment of the game.
Great Gallery
The eighteenth-century wing contains two pavilions associated with Garove’s work. They are covered with multicolored pentagonal ceramic tiles and joined by the Great Gallery, whose exposed brickwork contrasts with the plastered seventeenth-century palace. The gallery has stucco decoration, 44 arched windows, and a black-and-white tiled floor. Its decoration followed Juvarra’s design, with stucco work associated with Pietro Filippo Somazzi. The interiors originally included stucco, statues, and paintings, and Castellamonte described the collection as numbering as many as 8,000 paintings. Court artists associated with the interiors included Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli, Pietro Domenico Olivero, and Bernardino Quadri.
Stables and Exhibition Buildings
Juvarra Stables
The Juvarra stables comprise a large atrium, identified as room 57, overlooking the gardens, and a vaulted building divided by a wall into the Great Stable on the north and the Citroneria on the south. The Great Stable, room 58, measures 148 meters in length, 12 meters in width, and 15 meters in height. It formerly held approximately 200 horses and sheltered the northern side of the Citroneria during winter. It now displays carriages, uniforms, and the Venetian Bucintoro.
Citroneria
The Citroneria, room 59, is a vaulted gallery measuring 148 meters long, 14 meters wide, and 16 meters high. It was built to store citrus fruits from the gardens during winter. Wall niches and large southern arches topped by oculi face the gardens, while trompe-l’oeil windows on the northern wall imitate those arches. Trompe-l’oeil is a pictorial technique that creates the illusion of three-dimensional architecture. The gallery is now used for temporary exhibitions.
The Bucintoro was commissioned in Venice by Victor Amadeus II between 1729 and 1731. Other displayed vehicles include the gilded ceremonial carriage commissioned by Victor Emmanuel II, the silver carriage of Queen Margherita, carriages associated with Umberto I and Victor Emmanuel III, and Napoleon’s carriage on temporary display. The former stable area also contains a conservation and restoration center of approximately 8,000 square meters, with laboratories for diagnosing, restoring, and conserving works of art. A highly detailed model of the palace complex was made by Carlo Costantini.
Church of Sant’Uberto
Filippo Juvarra built Sant’Uberto between 1716 and 1729 as a Baroque church dedicated to Saint Hubert, the patron saint of hunters. Its plan forms a Greek cross around an octagonal central core, with a high altar, two side altars, and four chapels placed diagonally. Because the church is enclosed within the palace complex, a dome could not be built. Instead, Giovanni Antonio Galliari painted a trompe-l’oeil dome on the vault. Juvarra set the façade back from the Great Gallery, creating a parvise, an open forecourt in front of a church.
Inside, tall lesenes, flat vertical projections resembling pilasters, support the entablature. Between 1724 and 1729, Giovanni Baratta and his nephew Giovanni Antonio Cybei executed the sculptural program. It includes upper-level tribunes for the monarch and court, a high altar with flying angels supporting a small temple-shaped ciborium, and statues of Saints Augustine, Ambrose, Athanasius, and John Chrysostom. A ciborium is a canopy placed over a church altar.
The paintings center on the Virgin Mary and associated saints. Works by Francesco Trevisani, Sebastiano Ricci, and Sebastiano Conca decorate the side altars and chapels, while the baptismal font stands in the chapel to the left of the entrance. Under Charles Emmanuel III, Benedetto Alfieri completed the architectural connections between Sant’Uberto and the palace, including a monumental staircase to the upper tribune and a tunnel linking the chapel with the Citroneria. The church received a minor restoration in 1961 and a complete restoration beginning in 1999.
Gardens and Park
The original gardens disappeared after their conversion into military training grounds. Historical drawings show a formal garden arranged on three terraces linked by elaborate stairways, with a clock tower, the Fountain of Hercules, a semicircular theater, and parterres. The seventeenth-century complex also included the Temple of Diana, an orangery, terraces, and porticos along the town’s principal street.
The modern park recreates the landscape setting in a contemporary style. It includes works by Giuseppe Penone, among them a twelve-meter artificial cedar trunk that conceals and releases the thermal discharges from the palace’s heating installations. Some restored garden areas were damaged by severe flooding in June 2007.
